Montgomery County recently exercised a rarely used affordable housing tool — one the county executive says he wants to employ more — to help a nonprofit gain ownership of a 345-unit Aspen Hill apartment complex, with plans to preserve affordability there for decades to come.
Silver Spring-based Enterprise Community Development Inc. bought Westchester West apartments at 3214 Hewitt Ave. from Montgomery County, committing to cap rents at certain affordability levels, immediately after the county bought the property from Westchester Gardens LLC, the previous private-sector owner. This back-to-back arrangement is an instance of the county’s right of first refusal, or ROFR, program — a provision in the county code that gives the local government first dibs on buying, at full market value, any residential rental property with four or more units that goes up for sale.
The purpose is to preserve so-called naturally occurring affordable housing, which means housing that’s relatively low-cost to rent, usually because it’s older and less amenitized — but that’s not guaranteed to stay that way, as market pressure makes it increasingly likely those properties will be redeveloped into newer, more expensive units. If the county decides it wants to keep such housing affordable, it can exercise its ROFR right, and then transfer the property to a partner that agrees to cap rents at certain levels.
